Movie Theatre BAT

[Skyfire2275 23]

Well, I got discouraged trying to make a glass texture for the Renaissance Centre... and I needed a movie theatre for a city I am building, so I decided to make one. Not only that I decided to try to recreate a theatre near my house. It is pretty colourful and almost cartoony, but it does actually look like this. Since it is only a 10 minutes drive from my house, I went there and took a bunch of pics... So I have TONS of reference material.

So far it is mostly done... need to do the nightlights and the roof junk. As you can see I already made an HVAC unit and a small cement block that is not very obvious. Most of the texturing is done, but I need to fix the roof texture. Too bland.

Click to enlarge.

And here's a real pic of the main entrance that I took. My recreation is 99% accurate I'd say. Not perfect. But that's ok since many of these theatres exist in Canada and they are all slightly different anyways. This one can be the SimCity SilverCity... no pun intended... the theatre is called SilverCity.

What do you think?

Hideous and cartoony... or just the colourful building you need for your suburbs? lol.

EDIT: By the way it is about 11x4 in SimCity tiles...probably a 15x8 lot or something like that.

[Andreas Roth 607]

Well, while it might be cartoony and "ugly", the CS-$ and CS-$$ demand can hardly be satisfied in the game, so more variety for the commercial areas in our suburbs can't hurt at all. For a 15x8 lot, I guess it should offer some 500 jobs or so (I know that it's unrealistic, but compare it with other CS buildings of that size), which would be a convenient way to satisify the aforementioned demand.

[wolverine 12]

I think this looks great. All our sim cities need the painted EIFS clad theatres for a realism factor. (Although I don't care for them in real life) But very well done!

[MiniMark 7]

will it be growable or ploppable? But nice to have some more Canadian stuff to download soon

[SimFox 802]

I think it is wonderful!

Only think I would change is the radioactive red on the columns by the entrance and the "MOVIES" perspective. In the case of the model it is actually reversed and looks a bit odd.

Apart from that it is great for its niche!

And couple of other minor things – roof, but I guess it hasn’t been textured. May be you could add some girders there? Not to prominent, but to break monotony and to make it look “structurally sound”. And the wall above the roof level I think should just follow the building contour….

[spa 968]

This is great and has some nice details on it. The texturing is garrish but it fits the building. The film on the outside is a nice touch. I agree with Simfox about the red columns. Try desaturating them a little. I disagree with Simfox though about the walls following the contours. I like how they jut in and out slightly. I think you should try narrowing the movie sign. I know the original goes all the way back but you see the original from the street level whereas this one will be seen only from above. Finally, I know the roof isn't done yet but as far as roof junk I would expect to see some fairly significant hvacs. Air conditioning and heating the very large rooms that are in movie theatres is going to take some heavy duty equipment. In any case this has the makings of a great bat and should compliment Simgoober's Century Theatre on the suburban strip.

[Skyfire2275 23]

Originally posted by: Andreas Roth Well, while it might be cartoony and "ugly", the CS-$ and CS-$$ demand can hardly be satisfied in the game, so more variety for the commercial areas in our suburbs can't hurt at all. For a 15x8 lot, I guess it should offer some 500 jobs or so (I know that it's unrealistic, but compare it with other CS buildings of that size), which would be a convenient way to satisify the aforementioned demand. quote>

I was going to make it CS-$$ with 500 jobs. I was also going to make it ploppable only. So just one version. The real one only has about 250 jobs I suspect, most of which are part-time.

Originally posted by: SimFox

I think it is wonderful!

Only think I would change is the radioactive red on the columns by the entrance and the "MOVIES" perspective. In the case of the model it is actually reversed and looks a bit odd.

Apart from that it is great for its niche!

And couple of other minor things – roof, but I guess it hasn’t been textured. May be you could add some girders there? Not to prominent, but to break monotony and to make it look “structurally sound”. And the wall above the roof level I think should just follow the building contour….

quote>

lol, the roof actually does have a crappy texture on it, but I plan on changing that. I will try to fix the red columns as well.

I have thought about the MOVIES thing, and I think I have finally figured out how to do it. So I will try to fix that now that I have an idea.

As far as girders across the roof goes, I do have a satellite image of the roof and I will be puting a lot more stuff on it. It seems to have two HVAC units for each theatre (32 HVAC units total), plus 4 for the main lobby and another 4 for the corridors. So, there's a lot of them... but they all looked smallish like the one in the middle of the roof right now (it's not staying where it is, I just made it to see how it looked).

And for the wall, it actually does go up and down as I have shown it. So, I'm not changing that. I'll post a pic later...

Thanks for everyone's input so far!

[Andreas Roth 607]

Why only a ploppable? This almost cries for a growable mega lot, and it's not really "landmark-ish" enough to waste even more space in the menu.

[beebs 129]

Huh... I used to work at a Famous Players.

As for jobs.. quite honestly, I'd say no more than 100. Unless you're inflating it up just for the heck of it. It's looking really good though!

[ShadeSlayer 15]

Whenever I'm down in Vancouver (Looks a lot like the one in Vancouver), I go see a movie there, great job on it.

[patriots_1228 51]

not enough movie theaters in sc4! I like this one even though it looks prehistoric and 1970's at the same time. Really accurate compared to the pics we've seen.

[Skyfire2275 23]

^ lol... 1970's? Try 1990's... It's less than 10 years old.

I will probably work on it next week as this week has become unexpectedly full for me.